Each person enters parenthood with differing levels of skill and privilege. Navigating the unending stressors, tough decisions, and responsibilities that come along with parenthood is not natural for everyone. Even those who enter this gig with every advantage spend time lamenting the pressure and their perceived failures.
What complicates matters is that parenting is holy work that matters tremendously. When we lack parental skills or are stuck in our own toxic lifestyle, the damage done can reach generations to come. Parents are the most important people in their child’s life, and they have the power to make or break their child.
The good news is that it's never too late to change the tide of your home. Even if your children are now adults, a changed and repentant parent can change their son or daughter’s lives!
Recently, I heard a story from a woman during my Community Bible Study. She did not know she was adopted until she was an adult. It was revealed to her when she completed a 23andMe DNA test. Shortly after this revelation, she met her birth Mom, who explained that when she became pregnant, she was caught up in addiction, so she opted for adoption, but later gave her life to the Lord. She said she had prayed for her estranged daughter for her whole life and hoped they’d one day meet. Amazingly this birth Mom was the one who led her daughter to the Lord, and the daughter's life is now entirely changed because her birth Mom chose to follow Jesus.
This birth mom had a toxic life that separated her from her daughter at birth, but many years later, God allowed her the privilege of being a part of her daughter's healing and salvation story.
It’s never too late to experience God’s grace and redemption in our stories! Here are some ways to break free from the cycle of toxic parenting:
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1. Invest in Your Mental and Physical Health
When our minds, bodies, and souls are under duress, we cannot give our kids what they need from us. We have to do the work to heal from our own trauma or it will be passed down to our children. This includes taking steps to break from addictions that can make us unsafe and unengaged as parents. Doing all we can to ensure the health of our minds and bodies is not selfish; it's a great way to protect our kids from those scary parts of ourselves.
This can look like, but is not limited to the following: finding the proper medications to manage your mental health, investing in therapy, potentially agreeing to in-patient or outpatient mental health treatment or substance abuse programs, enlisting the help of mentors, creating a strong village that can support you and keep you accountable as a parents. Some other ideas include: taking time to find ways to regulate your body. Walking, yoga, deep breathing, acupuncture, chiropractic care, sleep support, regular exercise, and nutrition can transform how your body responds to the stress of parenthood.
About two and a half years ago, we said yes to a pre-adoptive foster care placement of a 2-year-old girl. She was perfectly adorable and had been through more tough things than I could ever imagine experiencing at such a young age.
We fell in love fast, but about a year in, I found myself shutting down as a mother. The stress of growing our family this way and supporting her through her healing was taking a toll. Thankfully, I saw the signs of burnout and began to pursue my own well-being more aggressively so I could show up for my family how they needed me to.
Sometimes it’s our history or addictions that hold us back, and other times it’s stress that we say ‘yes’ to that requires more than we have on our own to give. Whatever our story, when we see ourselves shutting down as parents or escaping from our world through substance abuse, we must do the work so we can healthily re-engage with our families.
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2. Invest in Growing Your Skills and Knowledge as a Parent
Some things come instinctively to parents over time, but many others don’t. Lots of aspects of parenthood go entirely against our more selfish human nature. We must be willing to learn and grow to fill those gaps.
Parenting classes are one way you can grow your parenting skills. When you are expecting, most hospitals offer a variety of parenting courses that can help you prepare for the jarring and beautiful experience of bringing home your bundle of joy.
If you grow your family through foster care or adoption, parenting classes are required, which is hugely helpful because these paths to parenthood come with extra challenges. I like to call them the “Olympics of Parenthood,” which requires special skills and understanding of the trauma and loss that your child will bring along with them. It’s vital that you continue this special education as a parent as your family's story unfolds. We need all the skills we can acquire to not let our triggers interfere with giving our kids that enter with their own trauma the love they need.
There are other parenting courses for the journey! It’s helpful to be willing to engage with these resources as you hit new ages and stages that offer new challenges that often trigger us as parents. Love and Logic offers parenting courses that can help you manage behaviors in a way that brings more peace to your home.
Books, podcasts, and quality websites are amazing ways to grow your skills as a parent! As our family has grown, I’ve regularly picked up a variety of parenting books over the years, and they have provoked so much food for thought in my life as a mother.
When I felt burnt out as a homeschool mom, Teaching from Rest by Sarah Mackenzie gave me encouragement and the renewed vision I needed to keep going. The Honestly Adoption has taught me so much about the complexities of adoption. The Empowered to Connect podcast gives fundamental, practical strategies for common parenting hurdles and explains the science behind why we all struggle with connection, behaviors, and more.
There are countless other books that have challenged me as a Mom, given me the language I lacked for my parenting journey, and helped me see new ways to approach the difficulties we’ve faced in our home. Get curious and start learning more about your role as a parent and how you can continue to grow in it.
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3. Get Serious about Jesus
Here’s the deal: We are broken people, and our sinful nature gets in the way of parenting well. I’ve learned that more than anything, I need Jesus for this journey. And I mean this in the most raw and honest kind of way. I wake up and call out for his help, midday I ask for his grace and forgiveness, and at bedtime, I pray promises over me and my children because he is our only hope of getting out of this story alive.
Half-hearted faith is not enough to break the insidious sin that devours the peace and joy from our homes and lives. Without an all-in sort of reliance on God, we can expect to be consumed by our own weaknesses over and over again.
This is true no matter what resources or privileges we have. Many successful families appear to be entangled by the chains of generational sins, just as those struggle to make ends meet. Without Jesus, we become toxic over time, left to our own devices. Even with Jesus, sometimes our best tool is a heartfelt apology because we still mess up often.
Bring your family to church. Pray daily. Teach your kids the Bible. Enlist the help of other Christians to walk alongside you on this parenting journey. Repent often for your failures as a parent. Do your best to live according to the bible, free from addiction, hatred, sexual sin, crass talk, violence, or bitterness. Guard your home and family from the evil one, not even giving sin an inch in your home. Invest daily in your personal spiritual growth and formation.
This sounds radical, and it is, but it’s what it takes to break the chains of sin and death from our lives. We need a radical faith to experience real freedom in our lives, which can then impact how we interact with our children for the better.
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Originally published Monday, 19 May 2025.